Transcript
Lee Hatfield: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the latest episode of the Paranormal Prism. Today, I have got a very good friend of mine with me. This is Elliot Lukenar, founder of the Phantoms of Yore with his colleague, Eric Euchel.
Lee Hatfield: I hope I said that correct. You're correct.
Elliot | POY: I'll correct you. He's been married and he assumed the name Prievo. So now he's Eric Prievo.
Lee Hatfield: oh Okay, Eric Prevost, I stand corrected. But I say, Elliot and Eric are the founders of the Phantom of Yore. And they are the Haunted Walk's official paranormal experiences.
Lee Hatfield: Elliot, welcome, my friend. How are you doing?
Elliot | POY: Well, thank you, Lee. I'm good. Now, on their website, it says investigators. But between us, I said I see it more as experiencers, not investigators. But that's just my perspective of it.
Lee Hatfield: But I like the idea of using the term experiencer because with the paranormal, because it's not a recognized science per se, you're not in, well, you are investigating, but you're there for the experience rather than yeah looking deep in.
Elliot | POY: it's to It's what we're looking for. It's what we're all looking for. We're all trying to get an an experience. right We're searching for it. We want it. We crave it. And it doesn't always happen.
Elliot | POY: But for me personally, that's what I look for. I'm not looking for evidence to prove the paranormal is real because in my own way of thinking, i don't think that's attainable.
Elliot | POY: I don't think that can happen, at least now. but what we can find is an experience that is unexplained.
Lee Hatfield: So, yeah. So before we go into the phantoms of yore and how this all got created, let's go back to when Elliot was a little bit younger. And what was your first paranormal experience that you can remember?
Elliot | POY: Oh, geez. All right. I was raised in a very open spiritual household, so non non-religious. My mother called herself a witch, you know, tarot cards, pagan practices.
Elliot | POY: From what she tells me, it runs in her family. So, you know, the talk of ghosts and monsters and things like that and aliens were always a topic. My first experience, I think I was probably like five years old.
Elliot | POY: I was looking up from my bed and there was a white floating woman above me, just staring at me. Kind of freaked me out. I take the covers, I cover my face. Then when go to peak, it's leaving my room and then enters my brother's room.
Elliot | POY: Now, in hindsight, this is around a time when a family member passed away. so maybe it was a visitation. i don't know. I just remember a woman floating, transparent, white, looking at me above my bed. Not like floating at the ceiling, looking down at me.
Elliot | POY: non Not scary looking or ghostly looking, yes, but it's not like it had a skeleton face or anything like that. It was just a woman that was floating.
Lee Hatfield: What was it somebody you said that you had a family member that recently passed away? Was there any similarities that you can remember?
Elliot | POY: At that age, no. I mean, being that age, like five, six years old, it's it's really hard to even remember any details about that.
Lee Hatfield: True.
Elliot | POY: I just remember the experience and how real it was and how it affected me by scaring me, by covering my face. But a few other things, I remember it Easter and I looked out my window and we lived in Elmer, Quebec, and we backed onto a whole bunch of farmland and woodland, which is now all developed into houses. But I saw two red eyes looking me from the yard and I assumed it was the Easter.
Elliot | POY: I was a child.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, yeah,
Elliot | POY: There was one time where my mother and her mother were over, my father was gone. And I was sitting watching television in the living room during a winter storm and lots and lots of snow.
Elliot | POY: And all of a sudden this hand slaps the back window from outside. Scared all of us. And we went to the way she tells us. I remember the hand, but they said they went outside and there was no footprints or anything in the snow around the window.
Lee Hatfield: That's crazy. And i I'm quite envious of people like yourself that have these experiences when they're young, because I never did. Not that I can ever remember.
Lee Hatfield: My first experience was when I was an adult. But I do like, and i I always find it funny when people mention what you've just mentioned, where they see an apparition in the bedroom, and the first thing they do is put the sheets over the head like a small piece of cloth is going to save them from from whatever's coming.
Lee Hatfield: Exactly.
Elliot | POY: Well, I don't think the thought is to so to be saved. I think it's more to remove that stimuli that's creating fear. It's like, you know, okay, well, I'm going to cover my eyes because I don't want to see this.
Lee Hatfield: exactly
Elliot | POY: You know, I don't understand it.
Lee Hatfield: and if Yeah, and it's a case of if I can't see it, it can't see me kind of kind of stuff.
Elliot | POY: But after that, I got pretty, like I remember, like more scared in my room because of that experience. And I remember I had this Mickey Mouse poster. And then this is the 80s, so Mickey Mouse was bigger back then. And I always told my parents that the eyes were looking at me while I was trying to sleep on Mickey Mouse. So my dad came in the middle of the night while I was sleeping with cut out eyes, the exact same as the posters, and put them on the poster so the eyes were looking up when I woke up in the morning.
Elliot | POY: And that freaked the hell out of me. Waking up to see Mickey now looking up at the ceiling. that means...
Lee Hatfield: It's not like, thanks, Dad, yeah but for traumatising me for half my life. So at what kind of point in your life did you kind of realize that this is something that you wanted to experience a lot more of?
Elliot | POY: it was more of like a midlife kind of realization that you know you know i work in corrections know it's a busy field of work i found myself just doing that and then going home and doing nothing, walking the dog, watching a movie, like pretty much just procrastinating, right? And years and years were going by. And I've always had an interest in this stuff. Like in high school, I would skip school just to go to the library to read paranormal books.
Elliot | POY: You know, classes were boring to me. So I just decided to jump into it. I mean, I've done it with friends. Like we've gone out and to cemeteries and stuff like that. and You know, done little house investigations, but nothing organized. And then I just decided to jump into it.
Elliot | POY: And then just snowballed from there.
Lee Hatfield: So did you know Eric before you decided to? Well, obviously he did, because obviously you created it together. But how long did you know Eric before you two decided to create the phantoms of your
Elliot | POY: When I started in corrections, that was with Eric back in 2008, I believe. And we worked a lot of shift work together.
Elliot | POY: and in doing that, you watch a lot of YouTube. You have a lot of dead time because you're supervising people, essentially. And we would watch paranormal videos together.
Elliot | POY: And we always talked about, oh, we should take a road trip sometime and go check out the tunnel in Niagara or go to this haunted hotel or go check things out. We eventually severed in career paths. He ended up moving into housing and shelter work.
Elliot | POY: I remained in corrections. And when this came up, I just asked him and he said, yes.
Lee Hatfield: So where did the name Phantoms of Yore come from?
Elliot | POY: That's this.
Elliot | POY: It was trying to find something different outside of acronyms. The acronyms are overused, and it's not really great with the Google search engine. So I mean, i was trying to think of something more original, and something that doesn't already exist. And you must have noticed there's a lot of teams out there with the same names in different parts of the world.
Elliot | POY: So it was really trying to think of something that kind of stood out, that was different, and was easy to search online. so just you know i like the english word your and i prefer phantom over ghost so we just put it together you know which is pretty much phantoms of you are you're just saying the ghosts of the past right that's essentially all it is and that's what we're looking for and that's what we're trying to experience
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, that makes sense.
Lee Hatfield: So before we go into some of the experience that you've had with phantoms of yore, can I just touch on your your career right now?
Lee Hatfield: You say that you're in corrections. Have you ever had any anything that you can't explain in your work life?
Elliot | POY: don I don't know what I'm allowed to talk about. It's hard. Yeah, I mean, I've worked with a lot of clients coming out of the institutions that have told me some pretty crazy stories from mike Kingston Pen and other institutions.
Lee Hatfield: Sure. Yeah,
Elliot | POY: There's one case I had a long time ago, and this is before phone apps. I can't talk about what the person's crime was or anything about them because we can't discuss those things.
Lee Hatfield: so yeah yeah
Elliot | POY: I can say it was bad. And this person said that they had a spirit with them. Now it's so hard because I can't go into details.
Elliot | POY: So I'm just going to go into the evidence. I would feel uncomfortable around this person. And I would kind of blank out after visiting this person.
Elliot | POY: Like I had one of my colleagues tell me to keep sage in my pocket.
Elliot | POY: But anyways, I mean, this this this issue was documented through file records from the institutions. So it's not a new thing. We knew about it.
Elliot | POY: But he would show me photographs on his phone of things within his room that I could not explain.
Lee Hatfield: yeah, yeah.
Elliot | POY: And this is before the phone apps. Like, this is going back to, like, 2009, you know, like, a long time ago. The only type of phone app you would have is that they could put like a clip art photo of like the ring finger the figure from the movie.
Elliot | POY: You know what I mean? Like just clip art type stuff.
Lee Hatfield: yeah yay
Elliot | POY: It's not like today with You could put a real looking ghost in any photo.
Lee Hatfield: yeah yeah yeah
Elliot | POY: This was a different time. And I searched the apps and i tried to find any explanation for it. And I couldn't. But he had a picture in his room of this little boy with the old like 1910 sailor suit on.
Elliot | POY: just standing in his room, you know like a ghost of a little child. Not clip art, it was there.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: and And then he showed me a photograph of which he says the demon that's with him.
Lee Hatfield: Oh, yeah.
Elliot | POY: And it was this crouching figure behind his chair, like crouching like a golem, with its mouth stretched open like that Van Gogh streaming man poster, very distorted, like skull-like features.
Lee Hatfield: oh yeah
Elliot | POY: And again, not clip art. It was an actual photograph of a translucent figure blended in perfectly with his flip phone camera.
Elliot | POY: Like we're going back to like, on his age in 2009.
Lee Hatfield: yeah you're not going to have that technology
Elliot | POY: But yeah, like he showed me things and I just could not explain it. And just the vibes you got from the guy and it was very discomforting.
Elliot | POY: Yeah, that's that's something I'll never forget, are those photographs. You know, at a time where those photographs, or he wouldn't even have the technology to manipulate to create those, so the only thing he had in his possession was that Nokia flip phone.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. And like like you say, the technology wasn't there.
Elliot | POY: next
Lee Hatfield: So what was he taking a picture of?
Elliot | POY: No. he He didn't have a computer, didn't have access to one, it was all on that phone, and The photographs were from recently while he was in the place I was working at.
Elliot | POY: Right? So I mean, that that that really made me like, OK, well, maybe there is a demon with this guy. I don't know. negative entity or whatever.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: i don't really believe in demons, but it was it was disturbing.
Lee Hatfield: It's actually... Yeah, I can imagine. And it's quite funny because i I was listening to a friend's podcast last night and he got a police officer on from the UK who was an inspector and he's a massive UFO dude and he's going...
Lee Hatfield: yeah i'm probably going to be in trouble when i say this and probably and he said it like two or three times yeah i'm probably going to be in trouble when i say this but i'm going to say it anyway but it's but i totally understand the yeah you can't say x y and z because of the job you're in yeah the job that i'm in i i'm exactly the same so i fully understand it so the phantoms of yore created in 2018 with you and
Lee Hatfield: What happened after you created? Did you have kind of like a business plan of what you wanted to do or was you invited to partake in a particular haunted walk? How did that all come about?
Elliot | POY: So with working with other teams, I noticed that the sites are not interested in having paranormal teams down there.
Elliot | POY: The heyday of historic sites being, oh, I'm so curious and interested. Please come. We're gone. Now they're being overwhelmed with emails and requests.
Elliot | POY: right I care a lot about history. I want to experience these historical sites. If Eric were here, he would tell you, I care more about the history of a place and experiencing the history than the ghosts.
Elliot | POY: So I just came up with a plan that you know if we offered something, then we could experience these sites. If we put in the work to help the sites, then we get to experience the sites.
Elliot | POY: And the whole idea was to do it maybe like once a month, you know, like maybe like four times a year, just put on these fundraisers. but it snowballed because it's not widely offered in Canada like it is in the States. and then the sites started receiving funds and, uh,
Elliot | POY: you know, and then it just snowballed to be something bigger than it should be. We have full-time careers, we have families, it's it's hard to keep up and there's no monetary gain for us.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: We had to open a business or register a business so that we can get insurance to cover for these tours. Every year we run about a 10 to $15,000 deficit.
Elliot | POY: So that's a loss on paper, you know, and You know it's not a really lost in pocket. It's just the expenses gas mileage and stuff like that. It's, you know, you can claim more than you're actually spending. You know what I mean?
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Elliot | POY: Yeah.
Lee Hatfield: So where was your very first location? Can you remember?
Elliot | POY: The Ottawa Jail Hostel. Yeah, the St. Louis Jail. And that was in March, 2018.
Elliot | POY: That was the first one.
Lee Hatfield: And unfortunately, that's no longer available.
Elliot | POY: It was it was a great experience for us. Jeremy, who was doing the tourism thing then, was great because i mean we got to spend four nights there to investigate it, just us. you know like Jeremy gave us, he showed us the punishment book. He gave us their their lash to use while we were investigating. you know They gave us the original keys, like stuff to use as like prop objects.
Elliot | POY: We really got to experience that place. We got to see the boiler room. We got to see the laundry room. We got to see the hidden staircase. We got access to all over that jail. And it was really memorable first experience. Now, the event itself was successful and sold out, but it wasn't a great experience for us because it ended up being on race weekend.
Elliot | POY: And, you know, it's just... didn't work well because of all the people that were there. So it was really hard to host a public investigation in a running hostel.
Elliot | POY: Everyone still a great time, but it still was very difficult to manage because of all the people that were there.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. Yeah.
Elliot | POY: i Otherwise, if we had a weekend that it wasn't the race weekend, it probably would have gone a lot smoother. But there's still no complaints from it. It was just to facilitate it was difficult because of how busy it was.
Lee Hatfield: yeah yeah
Elliot | POY: And it being an open hostel, even when we investigated, we get people like we would have the whole eighth floor DVR cameras. And then all of a sudden, at like one in the morning, some half naked dude is coming down the hall in the pitch darkness to wash his feet in the sink in the bathroom.
Elliot | POY: And we have this on DVRs. Why is he coming here? He's on another floor. They've got washrooms down there. But he decided to come and walk down death row in complete darkness with no flashlight to the sink at the end of the hall to wash his feet.
Lee Hatfield: Wow, because it was it's weird how that was the first location that I did a haunted walk on. I can't remember what year it was, it must have been 2013, 14. And we were actually going through one of the cell areas.
Lee Hatfield: And a couple of the cells were actually padlocked so people could not go in. And as we're walking past, something sounded like it fell in one of the cells.
Lee Hatfield: And when somebody went to look and got the cell phone out and there was absolutely nothing in there that could have fallen. But it sounded like a a broom or something like that. It fell off the wall and hit the floor.
Lee Hatfield: But there was nothing in that cell that could have made that sound. And it's so yeah it intrigued me so much. And it's it's a shame that they've now taken it over as a a full hostel because it was a really cool place to go and visit.
Elliot | POY: And I know the windows open and close on their own to the pressure of doors, either at the chamber doors opening or closing. We've seen that happen. The only thing notable that I can remember from back then, it was quite a long time ago, is that we had is the cell door open and closing. Like, thing ding, ding, ding, kept going. And when we went to investigate the sound, it stopped. But we had an audio recorder going. So you hear clearly the cell door clanking over and over again for a long period of time. And it took us a while to catch on to it. Like, wait, what's that sound?
Lee Hatfield: That's strange. So the first time that you and I met each other, we came to do an investigation as a public event, was the SDG jail in Cornwall.
Lee Hatfield: Now, I know that you've been there probably more times that you can actually remember. But i the fact that I actually went walked away and did my own thing in what's called the yeah Hells Angels wing, and I actually got some evidence.
Lee Hatfield: But I know that you've experienced some really yeah cool things at that location. do you want to tell us about a few?
Elliot | POY: I mean, it's it's always during setup and stuff that we personally experience it. During the public investigations, we're kind of too busy and focused on you know ensuring everybody's having a good time.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: you know Phantom voices, like Eric and I have been there completely alone and we just hear a man call out. out of nowhere. We hear cell doors closing, then we run to the cell block and we can't figure out what door it was.
Elliot | POY: you know Whistling sounds, we get that a lot, but then that could be the wind from outside. Footsteps is a big one that we experience a lot, like pretty heavy footsteps, especially if you're downstairs in the basement. You'll hear them above on the on the jail level.
Elliot | POY: What else? Strangely, we haven't experienced like lights turning on and off there. But then we usually have them all off anyways.
Elliot | POY: I'm trying to think anything else that really stands out. I mean, it's just great for like EVPs. You know, the equipment, you know is always triggering there.
Elliot | POY: It doesn't matter what it is, motion sensors, Rumpods. there' It's just, it's constantly triggering. We're like, we'll go to a site and not a single device will go off the entire night.
Elliot | POY: But Cornwall is very consistent and it's happening a lot. which always intrigues me more than devices itself. would get the same equipment. Why is it happening triggering here more than this location or that location?
Elliot | POY: Right?
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: And it doesn't matter where we put the equipment because we change it up a lot. You know, just it just continues to happen. You know, specifically like PIR sensors or ultrasonic sensors or the motion sensors, like and in the jails, we just get a lot of stuff.
Elliot | POY: A lot of whispering. it's just It's just a very consistently active location. you know And it's also where the patrons experience the most touching, which is also fascinating. Because we work with another jail, L'Oreal.
Elliot | POY: And we don't get people telling us every night that something grabbed them or touched them. But then at the SDG jail, we get that constantly. People are saying they're being grabbed or touched.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. Well, you mentioned L'Oreal. A year last November, you asked me to pop down to help you set up for a public investigation.
Elliot | POY: You have the have the date down a year last November.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: I don't know. It could have been three years ago. I don't know.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, and I got stroked down the side of the face and, like, I brought it to your attention. and if if if you If you recall, that was the one where Kelly had a photograph on the on the gallows and then you said the last three people to get hung are buried in here.
Lee Hatfield: Can you guess where? And as she's walking across the grass, here, here.
Elliot | POY: Yeah.
Lee Hatfield: and here. and I tell people that story all the time. But but that's another gel that I found quite active.
Elliot | POY: Yeah, I mean, there's there's touching happiness there too, but just not only just consistently as SDG for some reason.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: That's pretty much it. I mean, again, it's just, but then again, we're at SDG a lot more than lowering alger just L'Oreal, L'Oreal, it's a harder sell because when you tell people, you know,
Elliot | POY: you know, there's a public investigation at L'Oreal Jail. You know, they're like, what what's that? Where's that? You know, it doesn't really ring like the historic SDG Jail in Cornwall, Ontario.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. No.
Elliot | POY: You know, so that might be it as well. But I mean, like L'Oreal for me is super interesting. The history, 1825 is the oldest jail in Ontario, second oldest in Canada.
Elliot | POY: It's definitely worth visiting. But I think just because it's in a township that people aren't familiar with and they may not realize, it's just like, 45 minutes to an hour from Ottawa or from Montreal, it's, you know, it's it's definitely a worthwhile one.
Lee Hatfield: oh I think one of the most coolest stories that I got from the L'Oreal jail was the reason why the prisoners had separate, were were were like segregated. wasn't due to any violence or anything. It was because they they enjoyed watching different TV channels because one was in French and one was in English.
Lee Hatfield: I remember be telling me that story. thought that was so cool. That's quite funny.
Elliot | POY: Well, I mean, that's the purpose of the segregation was that, to you know, the French have their own francophone channels and they want to watch that. And then, of course, the anglophones don't want to.
Elliot | POY: But, yeah, into look forward to getting back there.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, it kind of makes sense.
Elliot | POY: I always like going to L'Oreal. There's a spirit there that's always like, I'm still trying to figure it out.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. Yeah, we are quite lucky that the fact that we do have two relatively close, really cool jails that we can go and investigate at because both of them are let's use the term cool, in their own way, but they're also both extremely separate and different.
Elliot | POY: Mm-hmm.
Lee Hatfield: But, yeah, I love both locations. But if want to go on to a couple of more of the locations you've been to, a popular one I know is the the Mill of Kintail.
Lee Hatfield: And I know that you had, I think you put it on Facebook a while and you couldn't figure out what it was that you had a really interesting in EVP and you were trying to get people to, can you figure out what's being said kind of thing.
Elliot | POY: can't recall that. I mean, we were always getting interesting things coming out of there.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. This was in the main hall where the piano was.
Elliot | POY: Really?
Lee Hatfield: You showed it on, it was a video that you shared.
Elliot | POY: and at the mill?
Lee Hatfield: but I'm sure it was there.
Elliot | POY: Must have been some while ago. I mean, still so the Millican tale was like not really on the radar until a YouTuber friend of mine told me about it.
Lee Hatfield: got I've got a better memory than you.
Elliot | POY: He went there to kind of visit it because he's from the Lanark area. Then I went and you know, i contacted the curator and she said she really liked how i approached her.
Elliot | POY: And then we just built a friendship and then we started doing the publish there. And then we come to learn about the long history of spiritualism there. And it was just interesting how until that point it wasn't really on the radar.
Elliot | POY: i talked to Dave from CHAPS and he said that like 20 years ago investigated a long, long, long time ago, but like Yeah, I don't know, like I've spent before i got into contact with the mill, I spent you know years really researching what was in the Ottawa Valley and that never came up surprisingly. And now it's super popular and people have great experiences there, you know fantastic experiences and it's it's going very, very well there. And for me, it's the most beautiful location because it's a converse conservation area.
Elliot | POY: You know, you're surrounded by wilderness. For investigating, it's perfect because there's no near busy roads. You won't hear traffic. You'll hear the odd car run by, you know, but that's about it.
Elliot | POY: Other than coyotes, you see like like lightning bugs and, you know, hear crickets. It's just so peaceful and quiet. That is the only location that we've ever really experienced poltergeist activity.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: It's only really been there. you know, like things moving, you know, pictures coming off the wall, lights turning on and off. There isn't light in that place that we have in film turn on and off, you know, which is fascinating.
Elliot | POY: But then my whole theory on that, it's that, you know, sure, there might be some of those earthbound categorized spirits there, but I think maybe it's Ethel and Tate just coming back to visitation because they put so much work into the place and they love it so much.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: And they're not like, truly those like ghosts but they're more like spirits visiting us. That's how I see it. The gatehouse is different, but the mill itself, that's kind of how I see it, I guess. It's like it's more spiritual visitation. Just sometimes it'll be quiet, right? But then other times it's just hella crazy.
Lee Hatfield: Because it's it's weird how I've been there with you and a few other guys on a couple of occasions. And the mill house, I've never really had any activity. But at the gatehouse, i remember you were doing some some reviewing and we were doing some investigating.
Lee Hatfield: And I went through into the the kitchen area. And this was the video that I've got. where actually heard it in the kitchen area. And it wasn't the AC.
Lee Hatfield: It wasn't the smoke detector that was beeping. It wasn't any computers. And I actually sent it to a friend of mine who's, he's got one of his buddies is an expert in audio and video.
Elliot | POY: Thank you.
Lee Hatfield: And they could not explain what it was. It just looked like, it just sounded like somebody was getting my attention by going, psst. And, know, I've got the footage on on camera where I've got i got my body cam on And I hear the noise and I turn around and there's obviously nobody in that vicinity.
Lee Hatfield: Because I've got close to a table, I'm walking backwards and forwards to see if I can, if it was me brushing past the chair or brushing past it. It wasn't. And I could not replicate that noise.
Lee Hatfield: And I was there for a good five or six, 10 to 10 minutes trying to replicate a duplicate it. And I couldn't. And some people go, yeah, that's a great bit of evidence because we cannot prove what made that sound it may have a natural explanation but we don't know what it is so yeah unexplained at this moment in time but so yeah the the gatehouse was more busy for me than what the millhouse was
Elliot | POY: 80% of people at the end, I always ask them, so how was it? Which one was better, the date house or the mill? And they always, 80% say the date house.
Lee Hatfield: that's crazy
Elliot | POY: I mean, but it's like the date house is more scary, whereas the mill is more pleasant. It's like, I think it's more of the vibe. Like there's more of a dark vibe at the date house.
Elliot | POY: The mill, it's more of a lighter, friendlier vibe. Like it's not as freaky, I guess. I don't know.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. So out of some of the locations that you do on a regular basis, and you can pick one of the ones that we've already mentioned, which one would you say is your favourite?
Elliot | POY: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: People ask me this all the time. i don't have their... Each building is a unique character in itself. And it's like if you have you know six children.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: You know, you can't pick one as your favorite because they're unique in their own way. And every one of the sites are, you can't really compare them. The histories are totally different. I love each one for a different reason.
Elliot | POY: So I can't really pick a favorite. They're all favorites in their own way.
Elliot | POY: You know, i've I've never gone to a site and and gone, I'm sick of this place. Like, never. It just doesn't cross my mind.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. And i can I can completely understand what you're saying, could like you say, they're all unique in their own way. And they, you know, you can always talk about your experiences at all the different locations.
Lee Hatfield: And there's no way that you can compare the Mill of Kintail to a jail, because they're two completely different style of buildings.
Elliot | POY: Yeah, I mean, it's, but then, you know, it's it's like the ones I see the the least, you know, I think I get most excited for when I go, like, Murti Tower or the Sir John Johnson Manor House or the Lost Villages, right?
Lee Hatfield: Thank you.
Elliot | POY: Like, the the places I see the least, you know, I get more excited when I go there because I haven't been here for a year. You know, it's the annual event, right? So, and then, again, how do you compare a military tower It's just...
Lee Hatfield: you can't You can't, can you? So talking about you investigations, one of your favourite things each year is to go stateside and to go to various locations.
Lee Hatfield: And you add the, even though it was it was he it was more of a recreational, but you went to Gettysburg in April.
Lee Hatfield: How much investigation did you do compared to how much golf did you get to do?
Elliot | POY: we golf It was more to see it. I would like to get back there to investigate. I mean, i'm not I'm not really pulled to any of the buildings that are open for bookings. The Jenny Wade house, i'm you know, Eric kind of, you know, pits on me for this. Like he wants to go to places like like Lizzie Borden house. And in my mind, is if I'm going to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to have access to a site for an eight-hour window, a place like Lizzie Borden is just not worth it. to me because i really look at it from the perspective of of odds. So if I go to a sanatorium or a prison where 500,000 people died, my chances of coming across a ghost is a lot higher to a place where a woman killed her mother and father.
Elliot | POY: You see what i'm saying?
Lee Hatfield: Very true. Yeah, yeah.
Elliot | POY: So when I look at places to travel to, that's kind of what I what i look at. I want to go where the most trauma has occurred, not a single trauma.
Elliot | POY: Right. And a lot of these asylums and hospitals and prisons, you know, has seen, you know, endless amounts of trauma within their walls, you know, and that's what I look for.
Lee Hatfield: hey Yeah. Yeah, and yeah like you say, and let's go back to the SDG jail. That's the jail that's allegedly still got bodies around the basement in the ground. Yeah.
Elliot | POY: In the yard.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. yeah
Elliot | POY: Yeah. the The reason for that is that when bodies became unclaimed, they had to put them somewhere. And many of the old jails in Canada would bury them in the courtyards if there wasn't a nearby cemetery. Nearby cemeteries, well, you know, the the county's jail would not want to pay to bury for every unclaimed vagrant that was through a jail.
Elliot | POY: So, you know, the the cheapest thing to do was to put them in the ground or have an area.
Lee Hatfield: yeah
Elliot | POY: So they they have documented the removal of bodies from the historic SGJ jail, and people estimate anywhere from 50 to 100 are still in the ground and at the parking lot and courtyards.
Elliot | POY: You know, I found old articles where they talked about, you know, moving Clark Brown's body. because they were putting in the new court building or the county's building and they to move it from the female yard to the woods yard.
Elliot | POY: I found articles like that. So they're there. Same with L'Oreal. I mean, they they know the three executed are there, but there could be others. And they don't want to do, which is I brought up, well what if we do a fundraiser and pay for the ground penetrating you know radar to see if there's any anomalies in this courtyard?
Elliot | POY: And they don't want to do it because then that opens up a can of worms. Right now there's more bodies.
Elliot | POY: So yeah, I mean, there are people buried probably all over the place. I mean, there's so many lost graveyards as well.
Elliot | POY: You know, because we took a, the Milliken tale gave us the tombstone of James Naismith's umbral. Because they didn't want it anymore. So Eric's like, I'll take it.
Elliot | POY: And we know when that stone was introduced to the mill, it was kept on the bottom floor. i don't know if you remember the massive gravestone that was at the bottom of the mill.
Lee Hatfield: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Elliot | POY: So we took that because they didn't want it anymore. And they found that holding up a porch. So wherever James Naismith's uncle's body is, is now in a farm field somewhere with no marker.
Elliot | POY: Right?
Lee Hatfield: Wow.
Elliot | POY: these old, especially around this area, the Loyalists, there's old Loyalists grave hairs all over the place. On top of that, you know, a lot of like larger farming families would have their own burial areas on their land.
Elliot | POY: So like Clark Brown, the man who was executed in 1879 the Stork SDG jail, his family plot is still there and there's people taking care of it so right in winchester there's this little brown cemetery with all these broken stones we we went there and did some filming of the tv show thing and uh but he's not there but he has a stone there but the reason why they put him in the jail yard was because they were afraid that the community would take him up and mess with his body so they didn't put him there
Lee Hatfield: Wow. I do want to continue with the US, but i you've just tweaked my memory onto something about the SDG jail that the last time we was there, you were drilling into a wall that had got an additional basement that you didn't know existed.
Elliot | POY: Yeah, well, we can talk about the mystery of it.
Lee Hatfield: asa
Elliot | POY: So the basement of the historic SDG jail has been mysteriously sealed. And the on the blueprints, you know, it's there and it shows cell blocks. But the places that have been sealed is directly underneath the cell blocks on the main floor.
Elliot | POY: So when the Finians were there, they were captured and they were kept there, they escaped by digging through the floorboards and the upstairs cell block, getting down to that basement and digging underneath the foundation to escape, which was a huge embarrassment with for the jail.
Lee Hatfield: Thank
Elliot | POY: Because essentially the the military at the time, of the British military said, well, we'll help you guard them at the jail. And the county's jail, SDG, said, no, we got this.
Elliot | POY: Well, they didn't. They escaped. And they all got across the St. Lawrence back to America. So this was a massive embarrassment to the jail. So I think what they did was they filled it all up with stone. So if anybody, because back then it wasn't the concrete floors, it was the wood floorboards. So if anybody got under the floorboards,
Elliot | POY: well, there'd be so much stone that they couldn't do anymore. So that's why it's all been filled in. and And I think that's the most probable theory to it
Lee Hatfield: oh
Lee Hatfield: and the And there's no way that you can actually get in there and have a look because it's of that the state.
Elliot | POY: it. It's all stone. It's all stone. We we we we got a pipe camera in about a meter and a half through. but it was all loose piled stone.
Elliot | POY: So we were wiggling through the loose piled stone and they just couldn't get through.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: So, I mean, you know, I've talked into the maintenance people and if you ever find a hole somewhere, let me know and pass the camera through.
Lee Hatfield: that's...
Elliot | POY: We'll see how far it's filled up. But I mean, I think it's just, I think it's a great story. It's a waste of real estate for any jail.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. Yeah.
Elliot | POY: So the Finians were there in the eighteen sixty s you know They could used all that space you know moving forward. But they decided to fill it all in. And the amount of manpower it would take to fill in all that square footage with loose rock But they had access to rock because in those days, labor punishment was happening at the jail.
Lee Hatfield: yeah
Elliot | POY: So you would break stone all day. What was the stone used for? The infrastructure of the town. So that's how they made the roads and stuff. So they would drop off the stone at the jail and then they would break it, then they would use it to go and build the roads.
Lee Hatfield: That's crazy.
Elliot | POY: So they had the stone.
Lee Hatfield: So, wow. Yeah. So jumping back over the border again. Yeah. Because be luck we like doing that over here. You recently went to the Crescent Sanatorium and the Pennhurst Asylum.
Lee Hatfield: Was that for that was for a proper investigation?
Elliot | POY: Yeah.
Lee Hatfield: How did that go?
Elliot | POY: America sucks. No. I mean, it's i did it's like when people ask, I always say we get much more activity at the sites we work with here. But I think that's because we've probably built a rapport with ghosts if they exist. They know us. They know why we're coming. I don't know.
Elliot | POY: There's a big difference from the first day you walk into a location to years later. It's like, I don't know, it's like they become comfortable with you. i don't know if they exist, who knows. But I just find all of the sites get more experiences are happening now than they did six years ago or seven years ago. Is that because our energy is now part of that site? Are they comfortable with us?
Elliot | POY: Right? I don't know what it is, but it just seems like they're not getting less active, they're getting more active to our personal experience. It's not necessarily someone coming in to book it for the first time.
Elliot | POY: But I think when we go to the States, I think we kind of kind of hit that where it's like we go in and if they're there, they don't know us and they don't perform. You know, like a lot of the places like Conjuring House, it was the most peaceful, quiet place I've ever been to.
Elliot | POY: like
Lee Hatfield: Thank you.
Elliot | POY: no EVPs, no equipment hits, absolutely nothing all night. Just me and Eric alone slept over there. I mean, I did get an EVP of when Eric was sleeping, a very clear motherfucker, like out of nowhere.
Elliot | POY: but other than that, like we didn't experience anything, like nothing. It was quiet. And you know, people say conjuring house, the most evil house in America, demons and You know, Bathsheba Sherman, which is all a BS story.
Elliot | POY: You know, it was peaceful. It was a beautiful historical location built in the 1700s. I appreciate it The history. I love being there because you can still feel the history, the age of it.
Elliot | POY: It was a great place to visit. In terms of like paranormal experiences, got nothing. We heard like a snake or something that kind of scared us down in the basement.
Lee Hatfield: Thank you.
Elliot | POY: But yeah. I mean, same thing with Rolling Hills, you know, which is, they call it an asylum, but it was really like a poor house, but we didn't didn't really experience anything there either. Hinsdale, nothing.
Elliot | POY: Wildwood, nothing. The only places that we have truly experienced something so far has been Transillagamy, Lunatic Asylum, Pennhurst,
Elliot | POY: State School and Creason Sanatorium. Those are the three. And it's like I was telling you before, is it because of the amount of death that has happened and trauma within those walls that the chances of experiencing something unnatural or unexplainable is going to happen there?
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: Because there have been 500 to 1500 deaths at building. and each building You know, West Virginia Penn, no nothing. We had a few cool little things, nothing too crazy. The Estes was pretty crazy. We did like an Estes with like eight people on Estes. And that was pretty cool. Like, but no, the first three I mentioned were the more active for us.
Lee Hatfield: it So out of all the places that you've been, both the US and in Canada, what would you say has been the most compelling or inexplicable piece of evidence that you've ever captured?
Elliot | POY: It's hard, okay. Tala, Transaligami Lunatic Asylum, it was the end of the night. We had all the guys went up for the last session on the top floor where the shadow crawling figure is said to be. It's also we have the live stream.
Elliot | POY: So we're like, all right, let's just do a double estus up here and we'll finish. So we all went up. The only people left in the group were women. That's it, just women.
Elliot | POY: Now, Josh, myself and Dan were not doing Estes, Eric and Corey were doing Estes.
Lee Hatfield: Thank
Elliot | POY: And we started asking questions. And then sixth male voice entered the picture, which cannot explain what that was and for me that is one of the most remarkable experiences because there were no other men we were all up there and it mimicked eric's voice over time the voice changed and it was so loud that josh was repeating what it was saying and i have tori and eric both on camera and it's not them talking so this mysterious voice and i went downstairs i started looking for a person i was like what is that voice and uh if you go to our youtube you can find it if you wanted to overlay it to your podcast to hear it you could but if you haven't heard it lee definitely go and check it out i have it on the shorts i think on youtube and uh go and listen to it it's remarkable like it was mimicking eric's voice and my voice and then i was thinking well because we're on the live feed maybe one of our life like on our phone the live's running or something
Lee Hatfield: Thank you.
Elliot | POY: But then we snapped everybody out of it, checked everyone's pocket for the live. But when reviewing it it wasn't saying anything that was being said on the live. It was saying unique things, different things.
Elliot | POY: But it was in Eric's voice. But it's so loud that it's not even captured like an EVP, which would be like, right? It was a voice, loud voice that echoed.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Lee Hatfield: And that is the kind of thing that people like you and must you and myself want to experience, because that is why we do what we do four times exactly like that.
Elliot | POY: But in the moment, I was not reacting to it as being a ghost because it was so present that I thought there must be a rational explanation, which is why I checked everybody's phones and I was going downstairs to look around.
Elliot | POY: But there was a sixth voice. there's five men up there the only men in the building and there was a sixth speaking during the Estes session. So if you go to shorts and look, you'll find a Talamimic or something I called it or Tiptock or wherever else. But yeah, it was, I can't explain that. So that, i in terms of physical evidence, I think that would be probably the top because of the audio.
Elliot | POY: Penhurst recently, the first year I went, it was dead. We didn't get anything. The second time I went with Eric, we got straight up loud knock responses in the Mayflower building. That's all recorded.
Elliot | POY: That was super interesting. But then when it comes to knocks and creaks, it's not like a voice. it could be environmental. It could the property settling. We don't know. But it really seemed to be intelligent and responding to what we were saying.
Elliot | POY: But i mean,
Lee Hatfield: And yeah, and you you and I have got the same kind of mentality with regard to once we receive some evidence. So for you personally, do you have like a procedure that you if you get some evidence, whether it be an EVP or whatever,
Lee Hatfield: Do you have a set procedure for deb debunking it or trying to debunk it? So if you find something, how do you analyze that to then go, well, it could be something paranormal or it could be something rational?
Elliot | POY: So it's always like, I like to use and in the footage I put out like sounds, I usually would put over unknown sound, okay?
Elliot | POY: I'm not saying it's a ghost, I'm saying it's a sound that we don't know where it came from, it's unknown, okay? Even if we went to look for a creaking sound in a house, you would never find the source of it. So it's just an unknown sound.
Elliot | POY: It's not necessarily a ghost. It's just unknown to us, right? You might say, oh, it's the floorboards creaking because of the temperature getting cooler or hotter whatever.
Elliot | POY: That's fine. It's totally subjective. Everything about the paranormal is subjective. It's the perceiver that decides for themselves what they think it is. So same thing with EVPs, when we capture a voice, you know I don't know 100% if Eric didn't mumble or whisper something, right? You don't, unless you have a camera right on him. And even then you can mumble something without moving your mouth.
Elliot | POY: So every time I would post an EVP as evidence, I put a question mark beside it, because I'm saying, is it? It's subjective. You decide.
Elliot | POY: This is an unusual voice we captured.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: Could be explained, could not be. But we're no longer in that moment to look at everything. we can't go back in time and analyze every little detail of the environment in that moment. So I just put a question mark beside it. I'm not saying as it goes to 100%.
Elliot | POY: This is what I think I'm hearing. That's my opinion. It's subjective. You can make the decision on what you think it is. And you won't hurt my feelings if you don't think it is a ghost, as I don't know if it is.
Lee Hatfield: like yeah The thing is though, yeah. And somebody can say, well, I think it's this and then your brain might go, they're right. That's what it does sound like. I hadn't thought about that. And then you can debunk it and in a positive way.
Elliot | POY: That happens all the time. So someone will comment, well, I didn't hear this, but I heard that. And then I look at what they wrote and then I listen again. i'm like, wait, it does say that, right? But that's that's the whole, you know, green needle, brain, whatever thing, right?
Elliot | POY: It's like, if you think of one thing, it it changes it.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: And that's why UVPs are so difficult.
Lee Hatfield: yeah
Elliot | POY: All we can say, there's a strange sound that sounds like a voice. But I mean, I could whisper something softly in this mic and ask you what it says. And another person may have heard something different.
Lee Hatfield: Exactly. So have you ever been to a location that you've come away feeling either extremely emotional or extremely drained?
Elliot | POY: No, no. I mean, you're drained because you're tired. Yeah. In terms of emotions, I've never been in a site that has triggered emotions. I've seen it happen at the public, especially when people feel like they connect to their loved ones, which is a common occurrence. It happens all the time and it's a great thing.
Elliot | POY: It's almost as if their deceased family members are seeing this as an opportunity to come through because they're ghost hunting. So a lot of the experiences we hear about from patrons are family members that they feel like they connected with, which is a beautiful thing.
Elliot | POY: Personally, i haven't been to a place that has emotionally bothered me that I can recall. If Eric was here, he'd probably think of something.
Elliot | POY: But yeah, I guess maybe because we're at the Hinsdale house and then we went over to the Wildwood and I was just really aggravated. And I don't think it had anything to do with ghosts.
Elliot | POY: I think it was just the travel, the fatigue, investigating two buildings in one night.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: Yeah. Like I know a lot of research has really troubled me, like Pennhurst. That was some of the most disturbing research I have ever done. The abuse that occurred to children there is horrendous and awful.
Elliot | POY: And it's
Elliot | POY: unimaginable, the things that these children went through in that place.
Elliot | POY: And investigating there, you kind of feel dirty. Like, you know, this should be respected. I shouldn't be here trying to communicate with ghosts. So when we go through there, it's always in a very respectful manner.
Elliot | POY: that we're we're talking to people, who are young people who have been abused and mistreated. And we kind of take on that mentality going through there. you know Whereas like other groups will go in and say, you know demons and this and you know evil entities. And it's like, no this was a a school, but technically a hospital for cognitively and intellectually and physical impaired children. And not all of them were impaired.
Elliot | POY: A lot of them were just trouble majors and the parents wanted to get rid of them and set them off there.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Elliot | POY: You know, but yeah, I i have a file, like I've shared my SDG file with you. I have one like that for Pennhurst with hundreds and hundreds of articles of abuse and poor treatment of children. It's a horrible place.
Lee Hatfield: Okay, my friend, we are coming to it to the end, unfortunately. I could talk to you all night because, like say, me and you have a great passion for history. and We could talk about different locations all night. So if somebody wants to come out with Phantoms and Rior on a public investigation or experience,
Lee Hatfield: what what plans have you got for the fall, even though you may not have any concrete dates yet?
Elliot | POY: But I'm working on it. So every year, spring and fall, we have a season. Next week, the date, well, next week, I don't you know when you guys will be watching this, but the schedule should be out.
Lee Hatfield: Thank
Elliot | POY: So go to the Haunted Walks website. You can go to our Facebook page if you want to see the schedule as well. You know, we'll be at the historic SGG jail, we'll be at the L'Oreal jail, we'll be at Murray Tower, we'll be at the Sir John Johnson Manor House, we'll be at the Mill of Quintail.
Elliot | POY: We won't be at the Lost Villages this year or Martintown because Martintown is undergoing restorative work, so they shut down for the year. And Lost Villages, i just heard the other day that our contacts there has left the board or the committee and they haven't reached out to us yet. But either way, all of our weekends are filled for the fall, so we don't have room for it regardless.
Elliot | POY: And then in November, we have our Inn at the Falls Paranormal Getaway Weekend. That is where we have the entire inn, including the most haunted bar in the basement for all the guests. And the restaurant feeds us dinner, and it's just a whole getaway thing.
Elliot | POY: And then I get a secondary location, like a field trip for the weekend for the people who are on that trip. And I think we did the
Elliot | POY: always read the Bethune House, the Parks Canada house in Gravenhurst. We had and we've done the Octagon House too there, the Bird House. This year, I think, because I've been talking with the Gravenhurst Opera House, so I might get that location for a field trip location for that weekend because I'm doing a presentation for them on November 5th.
Elliot | POY: And then after that, we are going to have the Full Ford Place again.
Lee Hatfield: Thank you.
Elliot | POY: Seems to be popular, to that one. And that's another charitable event. So the charitable events like the Weekend Escape and the Full Ford Place and the Gravenhurst presentation, won't be able to find that on the Haunted Watch website, just as it's purely fundraising work.
Elliot | POY: And i'm also going to be at the Newborough Library at some point in October because they'll be investigating there this weekend. They contacted us because of the strange feelings they have. It's an old schoolhouse built in 1840 and then it turned into a court and jail. It's a tiny little stone building.
Elliot | POY: So I'll be there. Anyway, lots of stuff happening. And you guys won't see Eric towards the end of October or early November because he has a baby dude.
Lee Hatfield: That's a little bit inconsiderate. It's your busiest time.
Elliot | POY: I know, she's going have a Halloween baby.
Lee Hatfield: but i Wait till I see him. I'll be having words. So if you just want to do a shout out to your social media pages.
Elliot | POY: Just Google Phantoms of Fjord. Everything pops up, and that's why I chose the name. All you've got to do is put Phantoms of Fjord in Google, and everything about us pops up. Every platform, every news article, everything will pop up.
Lee Hatfield: And that's where we get all the information from.
Elliot | POY: That's it.
Lee Hatfield: Elliot, it's been an absolute pleasure, my friend. Like I say, I could talk to you all night. But for now, you have a great rest of the evening. And thank you for your time, sir.
Elliot | POY: right, have good night, Lee.
Lee Hatfield: Bye-bye.
